Yesterday and today I've been at OETC's ITSC conference in Portland. This year, they managed to pull in David Pogue of the New York Times as their keynote speaker. On Monday, he lead a morning workshop on digital photography. In addition to being a very engaging speaker (he pretty much sounds the same as his videos with the identical demeanor and suspect attitude towards Microsoft) he lead a very interesting workshop.

For the past year and a half, I've been hosting a podcast known as Ed Tech Coast to Coast . Though the guest occassionally vary, three of the regulars have been Tim Lauer , Will Richardson , and Tim Wilson . Yesterday, Will and Tim W. were able to join me for a recording in which we had a great discussion about the changing nature of technology in education. Is it simply a tool? Or, is it a transformational skill?

Using Web 2.0 Services to help manage projects and, generally speaking, as organizers for educators to use with students has been on my mind lately. Much of this has to due with a handful of conversations I've been having with Jane Krauss about how to use things like wikis, blogs, netvibes, Google aps, etc. as tools for teachers to use in creating project spaces to work with kids. For instance, she pointed the flatclassroomproject as a good example of this.

I've been using Netvibes a lot lately and have presented on some of its virtues to some administrators at a class at Lewis and Clark college along with some future leaders in the Beaverton District. While I think there are a number of great advantages to using Netvibes, it falls short in some areas; especially in helping to organize calendar-like information. Of course, you can subscribe to a calendar, but there isn't a native one.

When it comes to online calendars, I tend to use either Google Calendar or 30boxes . I used to like Trumba, but they've gone a bit too comercial (very expenses plans, etc.). For quite a few of the folks I regularly work with like schools and non-profites both Google's calendar and 30boxes work just fine. In fact, when I'm not looking to connect calendar info with a specific set of applications/tools (as in part of Google's accounts) I tend to recommend 30boxes because it is very easy and intuitive to use. Additionally, it has some interesting built-ins like to-do lists, and a "Webtop" view which I think are outstanding. In looking around their forums, I came across an intersting mashup called Robocal . It takes you access info from either 30boxes or Google Calendar and sets up a phone number and PIN so that you can call it up and hear your calendar read to you - upcoming events, etc. Each "user" (as defined by the phone the call from) can leave a message or note for him/herself, as well. Although the robo-voice reading the calendar is the most elegant one in the world, it does a great job. For schools, there is the obvious advantage of essentailly enhancing accessibility to information. For an individual teacher, structuring a 30boxes calendar effectively using homework assignments, due dates and the like, would essentially build a "homework line" that students (and parents) could call.

I created this short video (about 7 minutes) as an introduction to using Netvibes as a personal homepage for educators and students. Aside from the ease of user, there are two reasons why I think Netvibes is a particularly elegant solution:

1. Registration - unlike many Web 2.0 sites which require users to create a new account which send a verification email to the user, Netvibes lets you create an account and begin work right away. You do get an email, but you are not required to verify it before using Netvibes. Of course, there are some issues surrounding this, but given how difficult it often is to have students checking email (e.g. loggin in via webmail, forgetting passwords, etc) I think that this works wonderfully because you can create an account instantly and begin working.